I made a 5×6 mini-chess variant with 144 starting positions, Chess144.com
A while back I got a little obsessed with the idea of chess on a smaller board — something you could finish in a couple of minutes but that still had real tactics instead of being a novelty. I even made a small rollup mini-chess board and would bring it to chess clubs to play with other players OTB.
One of my favorite Variants is chess on a 5×6 board. Each side gets one king, one queen, one rook, one bishop, one knight, and five pawns. Everything moves like normal chess, with two changes for the smaller board: pawns only move one square (so no double-step, and no en passant), and castling still works — the king steps two toward its rook and the rook hops over. Pawns still promote, Draws automatically happen from 3 fold repetition and insufficient mating material.
The name is the math, think chess-960 only smaller. There are 120 ways to order five different pieces on the back rank. Throw out every setup where the king starts right next to its own rook and you're left with 72 legal orders. Black will randomly either mirror White's row or reverse it, so 72 × 2 = 144 unique starting positions. I named every one after a great female chess player, so you might open a game as "the Judit", "the Irina" or "the Yifan."
What surprised me is how sharp it plays. With less room, tactics show up almost immediately, and a full game is usually two or three minutes. It scratches the same itch as bullet, but the positions feel fresh because you're not in a line you've memorized.
It's completely free, Anonymous, runs in any browser, desktop or phone, no signup necessary. You can play the bot across six levels, play live opponents (ranked, 2+1), or grind 500 "Mate in 1/2/3" puzzles. I vibecoded it myself and I'm still tuning it, so I'd genuinely like to hear what breaks or what feels off. I think its great for new chess players and chess veterans like yourself.
Mostly I'm curious what do you all think of mini chess? Hope to catch some of you out there in the live player Queue! Mods let me know if everything is alright with this post.